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Monday, 1 July 2013

'I don't get why people write stories without sex in them' -Julia Gfrorer

My interview /feature with
artists and comics creator Julia Gfrorer went up on The Beat today. I don't
think I'll reproduce it in full here (it's pretty lengthy), but here's an excerpt. Please go have a read if it piques your interest:

“Her work resonates with the
reader because it succeeds in harbouring a greater depth- ostensibly it
explores humanity: people and their wants and desires, their extents and
extremes, their complex simplicities, and always coming from a place of such
feeling and emotion; the crux of what drives anyone to do anything, the crux of
being. It’s made all the more stronger by a tangible, focused essence lent to
it by its creator, and Gfrӧrer’s willingness to explore herself, her emotions,
things that trouble or interest her, and spin all that into a true fiction laid
out on the page.

‘For as long as I can remember
I’ve used drawing as a way to manifest my darkest thoughts: if it scares me, if
it makes me cry, if I feel ashamed for thinking it I’ll try to put it on the
page and address it. I want to hunt my demons down and ride them until they die
of exhaustion.

There’s a confrontational element
to my stories, though my drawings tend to be, despite my efforts to the
contrary, very delicate, and I think I’ve only been able to get those elements
to work well together in an intimate medium like a book. Maybe it’s just
that I feel safer spilling my guts into a book, which, in a sense, receives its
audience in private.

I wrote a comic last summer about
Athanasius Kircher taking me on a tour of the world underground, and when I’m
afraid to go he tells me, “It is the duty of those who possess even a little
courage to explore the world within, and to map it for those not destined to
explore.” Without meaning to, I was writing my mission statement.”